


Thaw

by deadlifts



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, M/M, Post-Canon, Sacrilege (toward fodlan's goddess), Sexual Content, Spoilers, dimitri and claude inch their way to the darkside: the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-24 23:14:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22086094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlifts/pseuds/deadlifts
Summary: Post-CF AU: Claude and Dimitri ended Edelgard's reign at a cost. They have neither the love of the people nor the resources to rule them. They only have each other.Written for Day 1 of DimiClaude Week 2020: Winter & Dreams
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 20
Kudos: 92





	Thaw

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [消融](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25067776) by [QianWei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QianWei/pseuds/QianWei)



> This fic is dark and contains sexual content (but not outright explicit smut).

Dimitri finds Claude on the balcony, overlooking the grounds, looking every part the king he will never be, surveying an empty courtyard where no one will ever bend the knee. 

When Dimitri steps out to join him, he feels the bite of the wind. A storm is coming — he can feel it in his scars: the ache of memory, the pull of the cold. Neither of them are dressed for this. They offer themselves up to winter, unsheltered and incomplete, but it will not take them. 

Side by side, they stand in silence until it begins to snow. 

The snowflakes that fall and land on Dimitri’s skin melt before he can brush them away. He looks at Claude, who looks up at the sky and says, “No dawn today.” The snow seems to avoid him entirely, repelled by him, falling around instead of on him. 

“We’re burning,” Dimitri murmurs. Bright and inexorable, they tore through Fódlan until all remained is this: ash that falls from the sky, remnants of dreams long seared away. 

“We burned,” Claude corrects, turning his attention to his hands, free of a bow but marred by the memory. The very hands that killed a person once thought to be immortal — a person once thought to be a friend. 

Dimitri doesn’t look at his own hands. He doesn’t need to. They feel warm despite the freezing air, as though the blood upon them is still fresh — as though Edelgard remains in his grip. 

It’s over, but it never ends. 

* * *

“You have to rebuild,” Felix tells him when he visits from his territory, seated at the table, with only Dimitri and Claude as his audience. “This has gone on long enough.” 

“How?” Dimitri asks. They have no coin, no labor, and many of their citizens are dead. There’s little to do and even less to save. 

“Monarchy is over,” Claude replies from where he stands in the corner of the room, a glass in hand, which he raises. “Long live the people.” 

“The people,” Felix hisses, glaring at Claude, “need guidance. They need a leader.” 

“I have done what I can for them,” Dimitri states, sighing and sitting back in his chair. “I have freed them.” 

“If you free an animal that has been held captive,” Felix replies, attempting to wrap patience around his words and deliver them evenly, “it will not know how to feed itself. It will die in the wild.” 

“That’s where you come in, Duke Fraldarius,” Claude says, joining them at the table to take a seat and offer Felix an unkind smile. “Go govern your people.” 

“If you leave all the power in the hands of the territories, there will be more war,” Felix replies, ire leaking through his tone. “We will be invaded and we will be too fractured to defend ourselves.” 

“Then take the crown,” Dimitri tells him. If he had it with him, he would slide it across the table. “It is yours.” 

“Dimitri.” Felix’s voice dips; he tries to dull his sharp tone. “Your people need you.” 

“The people fear me,” Dimitri corrects. 

The wild beast of a would-be king who descended upon Fódlan with rejected Almyran royalty to scorch everything in their paths — so blinded by revenge, they did not see that Edelgard’s reforms were working, that the poor and meek had begun to sing her praises. Now, the poor and meek say nothing. Now, everything is destroyed. 

“If you step up and help them, the people will come to love you again.” Felix looks tired, Dimitri realizes. He looks older. 

They all do. 

“There is nothing left to love.” Sacrifices must be made in war, and Dimitri cut away pieces of himself until there was no more. All he has left are ghosts — those he has outlived, those he has killed, and the parts of himself that are no more. 

“Go home,” Claude tells Felix. “Leave us be.” 

“You’re despicable,” Felix growls, loosening his fury once more, directing it to Claude. “You could fix this if you truly wanted.” 

“I never was a miracle worker,” Claude replies, tone easy, moving his glass in circles. Dimitri can hear the liquid sloshing at the rim. “You need resources to pull off a scheme. I have none. It’s that simple.” 

Claude had said the same to Dimitri when he found him after being cast out by his people. _I have nothing to offer you,_ he had declared, _except my desire for revenge._

Dimitri had accepted him because he was the same. Apart, they had nothing; together, they have each other. 

“This is the last time I will ask,” Felix says, tearing his attention away from Claude to appeal to Dimitri — a near-beg that under normal circumstances, Felix would never allow to grace his lips. “Try, Dimitri. Just try.” 

This time, when Felix leaves, he does not return. 

* * *

“I was never this cold in Almyra,” Claude tells Dimitri one night while they walk. Without hired help to tend to the paths, the snow has built up. It climbs along their ankles, staining their clothes, seeping into their boots. 

Claude doesn’t shiver. Even now, with no reason to scheme, with no eyes on him, he maintains a front of easy passage, as though this is nothing — as though he belongs in this snow, just as he belonged in Fódlan, just as he belonged across the border, in a throne. He accepts the cold as part of him, embraces it, waits for it to freeze him from the inside out. 

“This is not yet cold,” Dimitri tells him solemnly, reaching out to touch a tree that bows underneath the weight of accumulated snow, looking as though it may be uprooted at any moment. He doesn’t shake the branches free, merely runs his fingers over the hint of a browning leaf, then pulls his hand back. “In deep winter, it is so cold, your eyelashes freeze together and your breath becomes ice on your cloak before it fully leaves your body.” 

“How do you survive?” Claude asks, picturing the panic of ice forming within his lungs, of his eyes glued shut by his own tears. 

“You must keep moving.” 

“Staying still will kill you,” Claude muses out loud. Neither he nor Dimitri have ever stayed still — they pushed forward until there was no where else to go, no vengeance left to obtain — until now. Until this. 

Claude stops in front of an old, crumbling statue, made in the Goddess’ supposed likeness. She appears benevolent and welcoming, the promise of acceptance and warmth. But she is cold and hard like the rest of them. She, too, is empty. “Here.” 

Dimitri looks up at the statue while Claude settles against it, his shoulder blades pressing against the stone. It’s frigid, but when he imagines her toppling beneath him as he presses back into her, he feels the spread of warmth. 

Producing a vial from his pocket, Dimitri holds it in his hands for a moment in an attempt to warm it. Then he removes his glove and lathers his palm. 

His touch, slick as it slides under his waistband, is like ice. But then Dimitri leans in and whispers against his ear. The words are foreign on his tongue, wrong in inflection, mispronounced, but Claude closes his eyes and tilts his head back — imagines the feeling of success, of dreams acquired, of power in his hands. 

He imagines, and Dimitri guides him into a temporary place of fulfillment where, for one brief moment, he has it all. 

* * *

Later, when the cold seeps into their walls and the fire refuses to burn brightly, they remain in bed, furs and blankets piled on top of them, pressed together in an attempt to generate warmth. They fail to find heat — it slips through their fingers as they touch each other and runs from them, just like the people ran from Dimitri when he held up Edelgard’s head for all to see. 

“Come with me to Almyra,” Claude whispers, his words as cold as his skin, as biting as the slick fingertips he runs along Dimitri’s hip. 

“We have no men,” Dimitri murmurs. 

“We have each other.” Claude moves against him, presses into him, nips at his shoulder and licks at his collarbone. “We have the relics,” he continues, his fingers trailing a path downward, from hip to inner thigh, a dangerous promise of more. “And we have —” He takes Dimitri in his hand. 

“Hunger,” Dimitri finishes, his eyes closing as Claude beings to stroke him. They have an unsatiated desire for revenge — a craving for what is rightfully theirs, a yearning to reclaim their disfigured dreams. 

“Come with me to Almyra,” Claude repeats, whispering against Dimitri’s ear. “Help me take what is mine.” 

When he says those words, Dimitri can feel the rekindling of his fire. He can feel it bloom in his stomach and spread to his limbs. He can remember what it is like to scorch the earth as he tears down everything in his way. 

“Yes,” Dimitri gasps, bucking against Claude’s hand. “Yes —” 

They will burn.


End file.
